Warren Buffett says it's 'a win-win situation when the world trades'

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Pushing back on President Trump's protectionist trade policies, billionaire Warren Buffett defended the value of exchange — especially between the U.S. and China — in his annual speech to Berkshire Hathaway shareholders on Saturday:

The United States and China are going to be the two superpowers of the world, economically and in other ways, for a long, long, long, long time. We have a lot of common interests, and like any two big economic entities, there are times when there will be tensions. But it is a win-win situation when the world trades, and China and the United States are the two big factors in that.It is a win-win situation. The only problem is when one side or the other wants to win a little bit too much. [Warren Buffett, via The New York Times]

Buffett also offered shareholders a warning about digital security: "Cyber is uncharted territory. It's going to get worse, not better," he said. "There's a very material risk which didn't exist 10 or 15 years ago and will be much more intense as the years go along." And Buffett indicated he will continue to work with Wells Fargo despite the banking giant's fake accounts scandal.

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Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.